Many
in the industry assume that LTE is pretty much done and moved onto the next big
thing. Verizon Wireless and AT&T
have messaged that their networks exceed 300 million people covered and
T-Mobile and Sprint both have declared national LTE footprints. At the CTIA Mobile Con convention in Las
Vegas, panels were already talking up what’s next – LTE Advance and “5G.” In
truth, LTE continues to be rolled out in the U.S. and globally. In contrast, at
the CCA (Competitive Carriers Association) Convention, smaller carriers were
grappling with LTE buildouts, launches, device access, and roaming issues in
order to serve their markets and remain competitive.
Still
LTE has been a boon for the wireless industry. On the network side, the
technology is more operationally efficient than 3G; it can deliver more bits
and at faster rates to users with the same amount of spectrum resources. On the customer acquisition and retention end,
LTE has been instrumental in switching users’ rate plan decisions from voice to
data. Witness the movement from tiered minute
bucket rate plans to tiered and unlimited data plans. Data is sticky and competitive. This has been
validated by carriers’ decreasing churn rates, the markedly increased data
allowances in plan changes, and limited time data promotions in the first three
quarters of 2014. Once users taste what they can do with data whether it’s
browsing or through apps, they remain hooked. Though data has been around since the 3G
days, it’s speed and low latency that enhances our user experience. This phenomenon
is similar to fixed line evolution. 56K modems gave way to DSL, which gave way
to fiber-based internet access. In some lucky markets, Google and AT&T are
going to offer 1 Gbps service. Over
time, we’ve become more productive with speed, we depend on it and now we
expect it, not only in the fixed line but also in wireless.
Yet
in the U.S., we’re often reminded about how slow our mobile broadband speeds
are relative to Asia. There have been
incendiary articles how we lag the Japanese or Koreans perhaps to ignite emotion
and also action. Softbank Chairman Masayoshi Son said as much in his talk to
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in March.
There, he presented a slide that put the U.S. second
to last with an average 6.5 Mbps LTE download speed (By the way, Australia was
#1 with 22.5 Mbps). To U.S. carriers’
credit, they continue to invest in their mobile networks to fortify capacity
and speed out of necessity and to ultimately provide market
differentiation.
Speed
has always been used as a competitive differentiation, aside from the usual network
coverage. In 2013, AT&T claimed the
Fastest LTE Network based on some publications and drive tests. Remember the
tagline “Faster is Better?” In early 2014, T-Mobile self declared that it of
America’s fastest nationwide LTE network based on crowd sourced data. Its
aggressive network buildout allowed for presentation of a “Data Strong” tagline
and introduced “Wideband LTE” into the marketing lexicon. Verizon Wireless has also entered with their
own brand– “ XLTE” that runs on its AWS spectrum assets with the tagline “The
Need for Speed.” For its part, Sprint Spark has potential but yet to be
realized.
Outside the carriers,
publications such as PCMag and PC World conduct their own speed tests and
declare winners. RootMetrics has been gaining carrier marketing credibility
with its own independent drive tests. In
JD Power fashion, it awards winners in many categories including speed, which
carriers happily have cited in their own public relations
releases.
The marketing speed card will never let up.
Though we hear about network reliability, it’s speed that we can easily discern
as we use our smartphones to watch the YouTube video, pull up a weather app or
visit a webpage.
We have a multitude of speed
test app choices including those from Ookla, OpenSignal, Sensorly and even the
FCC to make our own validations.
Carriers again continue to push the speed envelope as they employ
different network and device techniques to improve the user experience. Specifically, an exciting feature to be
rolled out is carrier aggregation with other complementary alphabet soup
hardware and current and future techniques such as CoMP, MIMO, and FeICIC. If we
use spectrum/channels as a roadway lane analogy, carrier aggregation allows for
piecing different lanes into a superhighway. That may sound like hyperbole,
complex, and fraught with execute challenges but it’s in the 3GPP standards
releases and carriers say they’re committed. For example, both AT&T and Verizon
Wireless are looking to aggregate their 700 bands with their AWS bands in the
future. Down the road, T-Mobile may
eventually aggregate their AWS and PCS bands.
However, in the near term, Sprint (under the Spark banner) says it’s
implementing “2X carrier aggregation” on its 2.5 GHz band by end of year 2014
and 3X in 2015 with expected speeds of 100 and 150 Mbps, respectively. We, of course, shall see since a whole host
of factors can including distance from the signal source, network congestion,
and physical terrain or blockage affect speed. The point is that the user’s speed
experience is going to go up dramatically.
These speeds will exceed fixed line offerings and some Wi-Fi hotspots.
In fact, it’s already happening.
While attending the CCA Convention and CTIA, I routinely abandoned the
hotel and airport Wi-Fi for a faster and lower latency LTE experience. I was addicted to speed. Recently, my not so fast follower friend, Bob upgraded to an
iPhone 5s from a 4s (non-LTE) a couple of weeks ago. He said, “Wow! I can’t
believe how fast LTE is.” He moved to an
increased data plan and setting to add his six grader son on soon with an
iPhone 5c. He and his son too quickly
become speed addicts.
